Set UR DVR - 1955 Le Mans (80+ Killed)

[LakeCleElum]

Show will be Sunday night at 10:00 PM (PDT) on the Velocity Channel Dish Network channel 364.

Title: Deadly Crash.....At least one driver and 83 spectators killed at Le Mans in 1955.

[GH85Carrera]

I will have to record that. Thanks!

[Jagshund]

Or for more gore you could turn on the news and try to catch the Syrian gov't in action.

[HardDrive]

The details of the crash are rather grim. The hood flew off, and went through the crowd like a knife.

[recycled sixtie]

Originally Posted by 1968Cayman

Or for more gore you could turn on the news and try to catch the Syrian gov't in action.

Yes throw a v8 at that Syrian president.

[Zeke]

A black day in racing. I'm surprised this hasn't happened to any extent at other races like rallys. Hoods. They are dangerous. I've seen them fly into stands.

[Scott Douglas]

This was a sobering show to watch.
The sequence of stills taken from the film, that we didn't get to see, really tell the story.

[9dreizig]

just seeing this now.. any chance it's on youtube?

[intakexhaust]

Watched it - well done program but very sobering.

Lot's of controversy about Mike Hawthorne and I didn't realize of his kidney ailment of which he knew himself of a shortened life expectancy. Not that he died from any of this, but a few years after in a seperate incident involving a Mercedes.

Weird to this day, total fatalities are not known and the French police keeping records locked and sealed.

The race organizers decided to continue the race because they didn't want 300,000 spectators jamming the roads and possible blocking of ambulances.... amazing.

Nothing to that magnitude but forward to that 1998 CART - Michigan 500, Adrian Fernandez hit the wall and a wheel with debris flew into the crowd at the fourth turn grandstand... 3 killed and the race continued. The late Greg Moore won that race.

[LakeCleElum]

Very informative, very somber. We've come a long way in the design of the cars and the track itself. Drivers didn't even wear seatbelts. Pits right on the racing straight. Cars 3 wide while someone slowing for the pits.

Had heard about this for years, but no real details until I saw the show. For any that missed it, Velocity Channel does repeats....See it's on again this afternoon, 3:00 pm PCDT.

[skunked]

Caught it last night on Velocity, very sobering as others have mentioned.

[DARISC]

I was a young boy, sitting on the front porch swing eating plumbs and reading comic books when the news came over the radio that Pierre Levesque's Mercedes launched off of Lance Macklin's Austin Healey, became a magnesium fireball and landed on spectators. Mercedes pulled out of the race shortly thereafter.

I haven't watched the recording yet; the above are memories off the top of my skull. Coincidentally, a couple days prior to that race, a friend of my uncle, who lived two doors away, brought his brand new, metallic blue, Austin Healey 100-4 over to show off, first one I'd seen outside magazines. Many years later I bought a red '54 that I wish I still had.

[intakexhaust]

Weird, creepy thoughts. First assuming one could afford it, would you vintage race today Lance Macklin's 1953 Healy?

$1.3 million for a death wish